


Woke up new (you or your future memory)

by maharetr



Category: Cry For Judas (Music Video) - The Mountain Goats
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not Satan that comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woke up new (you or your future memory)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bliumchik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bliumchik/gifts).



The house is silent when Tina creeps in through the front door. No one's supposed to be back yet, but she still creeps. No one's supposed to be back yet, but Becky is there, leaning over the table like she's been punched in the gut, staring down at her hand.

White stick, Tina notices, white box, white leaflet. Like the color is the only thing she can wrap her head around. 

"Hey..." Tina manages. They stare at each other for a moment. The book is heavy in Tina's arms, and she clutches it tighter to her chest, somewhere between hugging it and hiding behind it, she's not sure which.

"Hey..." Becky echoes, shakily. She closes her mouth, opens it again, as the back door creaks open. Tina doesn't even think, Becky's fumbling the stick into her pocket, grabbing the box, and Tina swipes the leaflet into the safety of her palm, and then they're retreating silently out the front door as their mom comes in the back, and dashing lightly away across the grass to the garage.

It's dim inside, and they dodge the rakes and mom's car with long habit, heading for the safety of the dark corner behind Magdalene's maze.

Becky's clutching Tina's arm and Tina's leaning half against her, and they're giggling with relief and adrenaline and then Becky is crying, her hand over her mouth to try and stifle it, great big sobs that escape around her palm.

Tina wraps her arm around Becky's waist and holds on until the flurry eases.

Eventually, there's only their breathing, and the ticking of mom's car cooling.

"What'm I going to do?" Becky whispers, and her voice cracks. "Shit. _Shit._."

Tina hefts _The devil_ from under her arm, offers it to Becky's line of sight.

"I could always tell mom I've been consorting with the devil," Tina offers. "She'll be positively relieved to hear you're just knocked up, after that."

Becky sobs again, but she's giggling too. "Shit," she whispers again. "I hate bodies. They never do what they're supposed to, and then they _do_ , at the wrong time and the wrong fucking person and -- and I want to file a fucking complaint, damnit."

"Goods were faulty," Tina chimes in. "We want full refunds."

"Replacements," Becky says. She sniffs thickly, but her voice is steadying. "Different bodies, _better_ bodies."

"God," Tina says. She can see it, suddenly. Boutique stores of bodies, carefully coiffed and presented. "I want the legs of that one, the face of that one."

"No more periods, dial way back on the body hair..."

"No breasts," Tina whispers, and if her own voice catches, Becky doesn't seem to notice.

"Uteruses installed on request," Becky says. "Uteri? You're the bookish one, what's the plural?"

"I don't know. Either, I think."

"Whatever, none of those, they suck."

"Yes," Tina says fervently. "Yes."

Cooking smells are starting to waft in on the breeze, frying meat and onions. Tina's hungry, and the concrete floor is cold, freezing her butt through her jeans.

"I don't want to go back in there," Becky whispers, and for all that she's the older sister, she sounds impossibly small.

"You've got ages before... I dunno. They start seeing anything out of the ordinary."

"I can't," Becky says. "This isn't some 'I didn't nick the car last night' lie. This... I can't, I can't look mom in the eye and pretend this... I can't."

"Okay," Tina says. "Okay."

Becky settles back against the wall, and they sit there in the deepening dark.

"Was it you stealing candles, and sticking them up in the loft?" Becky asks. "Not that I'm complaining, they came in handy, but what's with all this hail Satan stuff, anyway?"

"God's not listening," Tina whispers.

Becky mercifully looks straight ahead, too. She bumps their shoulders though, companionably.

"I'm listening, if you want."

Tina opens her mouth, but she doesn't know how to make these words. She'd tried with dad, too; dad can talk melodies and chain tension, but she doesn't know how to ask about bodies that aren't fitting. Or bodies that don't fit you.

"I wanted to know if things were going to be okay," Tina says, eventually. "And, I dunno, it feels better than mom's praying."

They sit in silence for another beat.

"Is Satan listening? Are... are things going to be okay?" And Becky's only half joking, Tina can hear it in her voice.

That's a tricky one to answer.

"Someone is," she admits. "It's not God, and it's not Satan, it's..." The words are right there, filling her mouth: _it's me, he's me_ \-- but it's still a too-huge idea to admit to herself, even, yet. "I've been having dreams."

"Wait, what?" Becky twists around to face her, expression somewhere between amused and alarmed. 

"It's not like that. They're just weird dreams. I don't think it's real Satanism until I get a real goat's skull up there."

"Wait." Becky makes about three different expressions, figuring out what to address first. "Does that mean you have a _fake_ goat's skull up there? 

"Sort of," Tina admits. "I don't know what it is. It's some crappy taxidermy thing I found at the second hand place. I put it up last night."

"...This I have to see."

They get up, stiff in the cold, and it's half that and half fear that keeps them crouched over. They creep around mom's car and the square of light from the doorway, up the stairs practically on all fours, and it's almost like sneaking around when they were little. Becky clears the landing first, and then Tina crashes into her legs, because Becky's stopped dead, half on the stairs still.

"Oh, shit," Becky breathes. "Tina." It's a completely different alarm in her voice this time -- one that fills Tina's stomach with dread.

She follows Becky into the loft.

Becky is looking around, wide-eyed in the last of the twilight, and this must be a little of what it feels like to have a positive sign float into view on a pregnancy stick, to have that lurching sense of the world tilting onto a new axis under your feet.

The shelf Tina had set up has been ripped off the wall, spilling the candles and matches with it. The goat's head is on the floor, the head caved in like it's been stomped on, stuffing spilling out. _Definitely no skull then_ Tina thinks numbly.

"Who...?" She manages.

"Mom's been out all day," Becky says. "Either way, I don't think she's much of a whisky drinker." She nudges the empty glass with her foot. Dad, then, and the thought is horrible.

"Shall we both hide out here tonight, then?" Becky grins, shakily, squeezing her hand.

Becky texts about a party, promises to keep an eye on Tina, and to be back early tomorrow. They silence their phones, ignore the soundless lights of incoming calls. Tina digs up drop cloths to cover the house-facing windows, and musty blankets from the back of the storage closet. There's snacks left over from the hours of band practice, they light the candles and feast on potato chips and muesli bars and beef jerky, and it really could be like they were playing at runaways again except there's the pregnancy test leaflet still in Tina's pocket. Becky takes the stick out of her own pocket and stares at it.

"Do you...?" Tina doesn't know how to even start phrasing this. "Do you know what you might do?"

Becky rubs her hand over her face.

"I don't... I don't want..." She takes a deep breath, tries again. "I don't want to be Mrs Terrance-fucking-Wentworth, Jesus. Can you imagine? I want to go to college and get the hell out of here, and... you know?"

Tina knows. There's the dreams, a melody and half-remembered lyrics that says she -- _he_ \-- _they_ \-- make it out of here on the back of an acoustic guitar and a boombox. The knowledge is a life raft, but Becky has none of that.

"I've got about a hundred bucks," Tina offers. "From all the babysitting."

"Don't be stupid, you've been saving that forever." Then, after a beat. "Thanks," she murmurs.

Tina nods, silently.

 

They drag the couch cushions onto the floor and lie under the remaining drop cloths. It's nearly comfortable, with Becky curled up against her back. Tina lies awake for a long time after Becky rolls away and starts to snore, long enough that the moon rises and spills cool light through the far windows.

Maybe between one blink and the next, Tina falls asleep. Maybe this is an actual divine vision. Maybe she's finally cracked. Regardless, between one blink and the next, he's sitting in the corner, legs stretched out in front of him, only just visible in the shadows.

She monitors Becky's snoring for a while before she dares sit up, then she crawls over. There's blood in his hair, splattered on his glasses, and that should be terrifying, but he is calm, and it is impossible to panic when he's smiling like always.

"Hi," Tina whispers. "You okay?"

He opens his mouth, but the words are silent shapes. He stops, frowning in surprise, and switches to a shrug and a wry shake of his head.

"I'm sorry," Tina says, and there is a flutter of panic now, because altars can be rebuilt somewhere else, but the head injury and the silence feel serious, even if he is just a dream. "I'm really sorry about dad." He lifted a shoulder again, a regretful, resigned _so it goes_.

Tina glances back at Becky. "Are we an uncle?"

He makes a seesawing, faintly frustrated hand movement. He shakes his head, pauses to think, and gestures out from his body with an elegant reach of his arm. 

"Not now," Tina interprets. "Not yet," and he beams in confirmation.

"Are things going to be okay?" It's an impossibly unfair question -- too big, too many alleyways to get lost down, even if they could speak normally.

He pauses again, and his smile softens, saddens. He nods, slowly, but he gestures outwards again, this time with both hands.

"Eventually?" Tina translates. He nods, and he tilts his head up, pointing again to the bike-riding scar on his chin, on her chin, remindingly. "Eventually," Tina repeats, and he nods again, intently.

He opens his arms, and she settles against his side gratefully, ignoring the blood that smears against her shirt because for all that he's a dream, and maybe none of this will ever be real outside her head... he still feels like he's right here, warm and breathing. He squeezes her close, and she breathes deep of his smell: blood this time, but under that, the comfort of sweat and something inalienably theirs.

Tina squeezes her eyes closed, and between half a breath and the next, she's curled up alone against the wall. The world outside the far windows is a different, paler shade of blue, and birds are stirring. In a little, she'll crawl over and wake Becky, but for now she sits in the memory of warmth, waiting in the cold for dawn.


End file.
